Monday, September 14, 2015

New book on the reading list - The Knowledge: How to Rebuild Civilization in the Aftermath of a Cataclysm

How would you go about rebuilding a technological society from scratch?

If
our technological society collapsed tomorrow, perhaps from a viral
pandemic or catastrophic asteroid impact, what would be the one book you
would want to press into the hands of the postapocalyptic survivors?
What crucial knowledge would they need to survive in the immediate
aftermath and to rebuild civilization as quickly as possible—a guide for
rebooting the world?

Human knowledge is collective, distributed
across the population. It has built on itself for centuries, becoming
vast and increasingly specialized. Most of us are ignorant about the
fundamental principles of the civilization that supports us, happily
utilizing the latest—or even the most basic—technology without having
the slightest idea of why it works or how it came to be. If you had to
go back to absolute basics, like some sort of postcataclysmic Robinson
Crusoe, would you know how to re-create an internal combustion engine,
put together a microscope, get metals out of rock, accurately tell time,
weave fibers into clothing, or even how to produce food for yourself?

Regarded
as one of the brightest young scientists of his generation, Lewis
Dartnell proposes that the key to preserving civilization in an
apocalyptic scenario is to provide a quickstart guide, adapted to
cataclysmic circumstances. The Knowledge describes many of the
modern technologies we employ, but first it explains the fundamentals
upon which they are built. Every piece of technology rests on an
enormous support network of other technologies, all interlinked and
mutually dependent. You can’t hope to build a radio, for example,
without understanding how to acquire the raw materials it requires, as
well as generate the electricity needed to run it. But Dartnell doesn’t
just provide specific information for starting over; he also reveals the
greatest invention of them all—the phenomenal knowledge-generating
machine that is the scientific method itself. This would allow survivors
to learn technological advances not explicitly explored in The Knowledge as well as things we have yet to discover.

The Knowledge is
a brilliantly original guide to the fundamentals of science and how it
built our modern world as well as a thought experiment about the very
idea of scientific knowledge itself.

About Me

53 year old white male oozing privilege and advantage, if you find that sort of thing sexy. But, I care about the less fortunate if you don't. Either way I'm an idiot so take it all with a grain of salt.